This invention relates to electrical connectors and, more particularly, to improvements in the retention of contact terminals in connector housing blocks and in the solderability of connectors to printed circuit boards.
Electrical connectors must meet certain requirements and at the same time must be economical to manufacture. Therefore, it is desirable that a connector have a minimum number of parts and be susceptible to automated assembly. Some additional desirable attributes of an electrical connector are that the contact terminals are retained in the connector housing block after insertion, that the contact terminals not rotate after insertion, that fluxes used in a subsequent soldering operation are easily removable and that such solder fluxes are prevented from traveling to the mating area of the connector. It is therefore a general object of the present invention to provide an electrical connector satisfying all of the above requirements and having the above attributes.
In the past, a common way of retaining a contact terminal within a connector housing block was to utilize a retention spring (or clip) on the contact terminal. This adds an additional part for each contact terminal, as well as an additional step in the assembly of the connector. It is therefore another object of the present invention to provide an electrical connector wherein the contact terminal and the housing block have design features which cooperate to retain the connector terminal within the housing block without requiring additional parts.